1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a paging system and in particular to a method and apparatus for postponing pager service. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for postponed pager service for airlines.
2. Description of Related Art
Communication systems in general, and paging systems in particular, have obtained wide spread use in today""s society. In such paging systems, transmitted call signals are used to call selected receivers for the purpose of transmitting information from a base station to the selected receivers. Modern paging systems employ receivers with multifunction capabilities through the use of microprocessors. These microprocessors allow the receivers to respond to information containing various combinations of tone, tone and voice, or data messages in a number of different modes. This information may be transmitted using several known paging-coding schemes and message formats.
Today, the trend in paging communication is to provide larger and larger geographic coverage to provide customer""s who travel an ability to receive messages over vast geographic areas. Nationwide paging systems are often contemplated in an attempt to provide paging messages to customers without regard to where they are in a country, such as, for example, the United States. In this regard, various paging systems, including satellite based global paging communication systems, have been put in place to allow a user to receive a page almost anywhere.
A problem, however, still exists with paging systems with respect to users who travel over large geographic areas. Specifically, commercial airlines typically disallow the use of pagers, cellular phones, and other electronic devices during flight. In this instance, the turning off of the pager prevents the user from receiving a page at the receiver. In addition, the fuselage of an aircraft also acts as a shield to prevent incoming pager signals from penetrating the interior of the aircraft. Thus, a user while on a plane may miss any number of pages. Such a situation is undesirable to users who rely on these receivers to receive messages.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for avoiding loss of pages for users who are on an aircraft.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for receiving postponing reception of data by a pager during an airline flight. A pager is registered prior to the beginning of an airline flight. A data collector monitors for data directed to the pager. Responsive to detecting data directed to the pager, the data is stored. Responsive to a termination of the airline flight, the data is transmitted to the pager at the destination by a transmitter.